The economical use of coal in the household and the arts has been carried to great perfection. Anthracite is powdered and mixed with wet clay, earth, sawdust or dung, according to the exigencies of the case, in the proportion of about seven to one; the balls thus made are dried in the sun. The brick-beds (kang) are effective means of warming the house, and the hand furnaces enable the poor to cook with these balls—aided by a little charcoal or kindlings—at a trifling expense. This form of consumption is common north of the Yellow River, and brings coal within reach of multitudes who otherwise would suffer and starve. Bituminous, brown, and other varieties of coal occur in the same abundance and extent as in other great areas, giving promise of adequate supplies for future ages. The coal worked on the Peh kiang, in Kwangtung, contains sulphur, and is employed in the manufacture of copperas.[175]
BUILDING STONES AND MINERALS.
Crystallized gypsum is brought from the northwest of the province to Canton, and is ground to powder in mills; plaster of Paris and other forms of this sulphate are common all over China. It is not used as a manure, but the flour is mixed with wood-oil to form a cement for paying the seams of boats after they have been caulked. The powder is employed as a dentifrice, a cosmetic, and a medicine, and sometimes, also, is boiled to make a gruel in fevers, under the idea that it is cooling. The bakers who supplied the English troops at Amoy, in 1843, occasionally put it into the bread to make it heavier, but not, as was erroneously charged upon them, with any design of poisoning their customers, for they do not think it noxious; its employment in coloring green tea, and adulterating powdered sugar, is also explainable by other motives than a wish to injure the consumers.
Limestone is abundant at Canton, both common clouded marble and blue limestone; the last is extensively used in the artificial rockwork of gardens. Even if the Cantonese knew of the existence of lime in limestone, which they generally do not, the expense of fuel for calcining it would prevent their burning it while oyster-shells are so abundant in that region. In other provinces stone-lime is burned, by the aid of coal, in small kilns. The fine marble quarried near Peking is regarded as fit alone for imperial uses, and is seen only in such places as the Altar of Heaven and palace grounds. The marble used for floors is a fissile crystallized limestone, unsusceptible of polish; no statues or ornaments are sculptured from this mineral, but slabs are sometimes wrought out, and the surfaces curiously stained and corroded with acids, forming rude representations of animals or other figures, so as to convey the appearance of natural markings. Some of these simulated petrifactions are exceedingly well done. Slabs of argillaceous slate are also chosen with reference to their layers, and treated in the same manner. An excellent granite is used about Canton and Amoy for building, and no people exceed the Chinese in cutting it. Large slabs are split out by wooden wedges, cut for basements and foundations, and laid in a beautiful manner; pillars are also hewn from single stones of different shapes, though of no extraordinary dimensions, and their shafts embellished with inscriptions. Ornamental walls are frequently formed of large slabs set in posts, like panels, the outer faces of which are beautifully carved with figures representing a landscape or procession. Red and gray sandstone, gneiss, mica slate, and other species of rock, are also worked for pavements and walls.
Nitre is cheap and common enough in the northern provinces to obviate any fear of its being smuggled into the country from abroad; it is obtained in Chihlí by lixiviating the soil, and furnishes material for the manufacture of gunpowder. A lye is obtained from ashes, which partially serves the purposes of soap; but the people are still ignorant of the processes necessary for manufacturing it. Fourteen localities of alum are given in Pumpelly’s list, but the greatest supply for the eastern provinces comes from deposits of shale, in Ping-yang hien, in Chehkiang, which produces about six thousand tons annually. It is used mostly by the dyers, also to purify turbid water, and whiten paper. Other earthy salts are known and used, as borax, sal-ammoniac (which is collected in Mongolia and Ílí from lakes and the vicinity of extinct volcanoes), and blue and white vitriol, obtained by roasting pyrites. Common salt is procured along the eastern and southern coasts by evaporating sea-water, rock-salt not having been noticed; in the western provinces and Shansí, it is obtained from artesian wells and lakes as cheaply as from the ocean; in Tsing-yen hien, in Central Sz’chuen, two hundred and thirty-seven wells are worked. At Chusan the sea-water is so turbid that the inhabitants filter it through clay, afterward evaporating the water.
JADE STONE, OR YUH.
The minerals heretofore found in China have, for the most part, been such as have attracted the attention of the natives, and collected by them for curiosity or sale. The skilful manner in which their lapidaries cut crystal, agate, and other quartzose minerals, is well known.[176] The corundum used for polishing and finishing these carvings occurs in China, but a good deal of emery in powder is obtained from Borneo. A composition of granular corundum and gum-lac is usually employed by workmen in order to produce the highest lustre of which the stones are capable. The three varieties of the silicate of alumina, called jade, nephrite, and jadeite by mineralogists, are all named yuh by the Chinese, a word which is applied to a vast variety of stones—white marble, ruby, and cornelian all coming under it—and therefore not easy to define. Jade has long been known in Europe as a variety of jasper, its separation from that stone into a species by itself being of comparatively recent origin. Since the third edition of Boetius, in 1647, the two minerals have been regarded as entirely distinct. Its value in the eyes of the Chinese depends chiefly upon its sonorousness and color. The costliest specimens are brought from Yunnan and Khoten; a greenish-white color is the most highly prized, a plain color of any shade being of less value. A cargo of this mineral was once imported into Canton from New Holland, but the Chinese would not purchase it, owing to a fancy taken against its origin and color. The patient toil of the workers in this hard mineral is only equalled by the prodigious admiration with which it is regarded; both fairly exhibit the singular taste and skill of the Chinese. Its color is usually a greenish-white, or grayish-green and dark grass-green; internally it is scarcely glimmering. Its fracture is splintery; splinters white; mass semi-transparent and cloudy; it scratches glass strongly, and can itself generally be scratched by flint or quartz, but while not excessively hard it is remarkable for toughness. The stone when freshly broken is less hard than after a short exposure. Specific gravity from 2.9 to 3.1.[177] Fischer (pp. 314-318) gives some one hundred and fifty names as occurring in various authors—ancient and modern—for jade or nephrite.[178] An interesting testimony to the esteem in which this stone was held in China during the middle ages comes from Benedict Goës (1602), who says: “There is no article of traffic more valuable than lumps of a certain transparent kind of marble, which we, from poverty of language, usually call jasper.... Out of this marble they fashion a variety of articles, such as vases, brooches for mantles and girdles, which, when artistically sculptured in flowers and foliage, certainly have an effect of no small magnificence. These marbles (with which the Empire is now overflowing) are called by the Chinese Iusce. There are two kinds of it; the first and more valuable is got out of the river at Cotan, almost in the same way in which divers fish for gems, and this is usually extracted in pieces about as big as large flints. The other and inferior kind is excavated from the mountains.” The ruby, diamond, amethyst, sapphire, topaz, pink tourmaline, lapis-lazuli,[179] turquoises, beryl, garnet, opal, agate, and other stones, are known and most of them used in jewelry. A ruby brought from Peking is noticed by Bell as having been valued in Europe at $50,000. The seals of the Boards are in many instances cut on valuable stones, and private persons take great pride in quartz or jade seals, with their names carved on them; lignite and jet are likewise employed for cheaper ornaments, of which all classes are fond.
METALS AND THEIR PRODUCTION.
All the common metals, except platina, are found in China, and the supply would be sufficient for all the purposes of the inhabitants, if they could avail themselves of the improvements adopted in other countries in blasting, mining, etc. The importations of iron, lead, tin, and quicksilver, are gradually increasing, but they form only a small proportion of the amount used throughout the Empire, especially of the two first named; iron finds its way in because of its convenient forms more than its cheapness. The careful examination of Chinese topographical works by Pumpelly,[180] records the leading localities of iron in every province, and where copper, tin, lead, silver, and quicksilver have been observed; he also mentions fifty-two places producing gold in various forms, most of them in Sz’chuen. The rumor of gold-washings occurring not far from Chifu, in Shantung, caused much excitement in 1868, but they were soon found to be not worth the labor. Gold has never been used as coin in China, but is wrought into jewelry; most of it is consumed in gilding and exported to India as bullion, in the shape of small bars or coarse leaves.
Silver is mentioned in sixty-three localities by the same author; large amounts are brought from Yunnan, and the mines in that region must be both extensive and easily worked to afford such large quantities as have been exported. The working of both gold and silver mines has been said to be prohibited, but this interdiction is rather a government monopoly of the mines than an injunction upon working those which are known. The importation of gold into China during the two centuries the trade has been opened, does not probably equal the exportation which has taken place since the commencement of the opium trade. It is altogether improbable that the Chinese are acquainted with the properties of quicksilver in separating these two metals from their ores, though its consumption in making vermilion and looking-glasses calls for over two thousand flasks yearly at Canton. Cinnabar occurs in Kweichau and Shensí and furnishes most of the “water silver,” as the Chinese call it, by a rude process of burning brushwood in the wells, and collecting the metal after condensation.